


So Terrified of Waking

by gamerfic



Series: In Sleep [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Dreamsharing, Elf ears are an erogenous zone, F/M, Fade Sex, Fade Tongue, Fade Tongue might be my favorite new tag tbh, Lucid Dreaming, Nightmares, POV First Person, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3233480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan can't stop dreaming about the destruction of Haven. Not long after she first kisses Solas in the Fade, he offers to help her cope with her nightmares. Both of them subsequently get a lot more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Terrified of Waking

After Haven burned, my dreams changed. Even during my time among the Dalish - before the mark, before Corypheus - they had been vivid and easily remembered by dawn's light. I used to wake up, sprawled across whatever patch of ground I'd been able to find once Clan Lavellan ceased its hunting for the night, and marvel at the imagined vistas and strange events I'd experienced in sleep before setting it all aside and going about my duties. I had nightmares after the Conclave too, but they had been as vague and confused as my few memories of that terrible day, as if my mind were trying to protect itself from something I couldn't comprehend.

But my dreams of Haven were much harder to shake off. I dreamed of fire, of screams and chaos, of the twisted faces and charred bodies of the people who had fought and died beside me. I dreamed of Corypheus pursuing me through shadowy tunnels as my heavy feet stuck to the floor, holding me in place despite all my attempts to run away. I dreamed of trudging through endless fields of snow as the wings of a dragon beat overhead, tirelessly hunting its prey. When I woke, crying out into the echoing darkness of my quarters, I was grateful for the vastness of Skyhold and the solitude of my bed. The Inquisition already doubted its Inquisitor enough. It wouldn't do at all for them to overhear her nightmares.

All the same, I should have known that I couldn't hide from Solas. "I know that your sleep has not been peaceful of late," he said to me one evening as we stood together on his balcony, watching the setting sun drench the snow-covered mountains in indigo and orange. Whenever we were both at Skyhold, I always seemed to find myself in his quarters at this time of day, talking over the Inquisition's many tasks with him or just listening as he told stories of his travels. Often I would watch his lips moving as he spoke and remember the kiss we had shared in the Fade. I didn't know how to ask him whether he had decided what it meant to him yet. "I have ways of helping you, if you wish."

"How do you know about that?" I asked.

"At night, when I enter the Fade, there are times that I can sense your distress." His eyes flickered away from mine as something like shame crept briefly across his features. "But it would not be appropriate for me to intervene in your dreams without your consent. I should have told you about this sooner."

"Have you been watching my dreams?" I kept my tone neutral and diplomatic, not wanting to accuse him. In truth, I wasn't sure how to feel about that possibility myself.

"No." He turned away from me and gripped the balcony railing with both hands as if to steady himself. "Not intentionally. But as a consequence of my skills, when I am in proximity to other dreamers, some degree of awareness of what they are experiencing is unavoidable. The impact of vivid dreams on surrounding areas of the Fade is difficult to overlook. Ignoring it completely would be like trying not to hear you shouting for me from the next room. Recently, your dreams have been particularly forceful."

"You can say that again." I moved closer, still not touching him no matter how much I ached for it. "I'm glad you're looking out for me, Solas. Tell me what you had in mind."

At that, he relaxed, or at least loosened his grasp on the railing. "It would be a simple matter. I can perform some small manipulations of the Fade near your bedchamber to encourage more peaceful dreams. I cannot stop the nightmares entirely, but I can lessen their intensity."

"I'd like that very much."

He looked back at me again with a faint smile on his lips. " _Ma nuvenin, lethallan._ "

At first I couldn't really tell whether Solas had done anything at all. I still dreamed of battle and blood, still woke gasping in the night more often than not. Yet even these nightmares seemed muted somehow, briefer and easier to forget about by day. Soon they began to be interspersed with dreams more like the ones I'd had before the mark was thrust upon me - of my home in the Free Marches and the people I'd known there, of places I had traveled and places I would never see, of impossible things that came as second nature until the moment I woke up. After my third night in a row of uninterrupted sleep, I couldn't resist taking Solas by the arm as we passed each other in Skyhold's main hall. "Whatever you did, it's working," I said. " _Ma serannas._ "

His only response was a slight nod. Had he paused longer than was strictly necessary before he pulled away from me? Or was that nothing more than my own hopeful dream as well?

That night, I had the worst of the nightmares again. Corypheus stalked me through the snow-covered, smoldering ruins of Haven as I tried in vain to hide among the mutilated corpses of my friends. But this time, as I cowered, a voice in my mind whispered, _This never happened to you,_ lethallan _. It doesn't have to happen at all. Take control. This dream is yours to command._

I listened. Despite my near-panic at the sound of Corypheus's cruel laughter as he advanced inexorably toward my useless hiding place, I forced myself to close my eyes, to calm my ragged breathing, to remember who I was and where I was. "You're right," I said. "This is a dream. And I choose not to have it."

Immediately I felt the scene shift around me and cautiously cracked one eye open. I stood in a forest clearing in the mountains near Haven, though the trees looked more like the ones I remembered from the Free Marches. It was high summer now, and the snow had been replaced by grass and blooming flowers. The warm air was thick with birdsong and buzzing insects and the rich scent of earth. I could still smell fire and hear the sounds of distant battle echoing up from the valley below, yet I knew instinctively that this fight was for others to win and lose. I had created a place of safety where I could be at peace for at least a little while, and I knew who had helped me to achieve it.

"Solas." A faint breeze rustled the leaves of the trees in response, and I smiled. "Is it really you?"

 _No._ The voice was stronger and louder now, and I could almost feel the brush of lips against my ear when it spoke. _That is only the form you have chosen to give to the spell he set around you. As I told you, this dream is yours to command. Perhaps you simply feel safe with him._

"'Safe' isn't quite the word I'd use - but close enough. Come over here so I can thank you properly." I was beginning to understand what Solas had meant about certain things being easier in the Fade.

The air in front of me shimmered and coalesced into his familiar shape, all long limbs and easy confidence and pale freckled skin. Gods, it was easy to forget that this wasn't really Solas - and at the moment, I didn't care to remember that it wasn't. I closed the distance to him and he wrapped me in his arms. He held me for long moments until at last I tilted my head up and kissed him. He responded immediately and without inhibitions - _and why shouldn't he_ , I thought, _since I'm only imagining all of this anyway?_ Yet as our hands and lips roamed over each other's bodies, my questions of reality lost most of their importance. And when he laid me down in the tall grass I stopped thinking about much of anything at all.

I didn't know how much time passed before I became aware that we were not alone. I lifted my head, startled, and saw Solas standing nearby, looking down at me and at himself. _Two of them,_ thought some completely unfettered part of myself, _that presents some fascinating possibilities_ \- but the bright, wild energies swirling around this newest manifestation of Solas marked him as more than just my interpretation of the spell. _It's really him._ I scrambled to my feet, adjusting the various bits of my clothing that had gone askew or been unfastened. "How long have you been-"

"Not long." He stood with his hands clenched at his sides, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest, staring at me with eyes gone unblinking and dark.

"But long enough." The borders of the dream had begun to fragment and distort, flickering and twisting at the edges of my consciousness. I was suddenly aware of my own body on the other side of the Veil, of my dry mouth and my racing heart. I glanced back at the dream-Solas I had conjured and watched him dissipate into wisps of white smoke. For a moment I considered allowing myself to wake up, to try to convince the real Solas that he hadn't seen what we both knew he'd seen. But then nothing would change. At this pace, we might dance around each other until the dawn of the next Age, and I couldn't be certain that the world would wait for one of us to make a move.

I took a deep breath and felt the dream solidify again. Slowly, purposefully, I walked toward him, never once taking my gaze from his. "I sensed mana flares in the spell matrix," he said. "I worried the enchantment might be failing, so I decided to investigate. _Ir abelas._ This was never my intention." He was talking to avoid silence now, more flustered than I'd ever seen him.

"But it was mine." I gestured at the Fade around us. "There's no point in trying to hide it. You gave me the power to create better dreams, and I used that power to bring you into them. So now I need to know if you really want to be here."

"Astonishing. I'm amazed you could exert such control over your environment with so little practice or training, especially without the aptitudes of a mage."

By now I was close enough to silence him with a gentle brush of my fingers across his lips. "That's not an answer." I traced my hand down along his jawline and the side of his neck and brought it to rest in the center of his chest. I needed to speak now or lose my nerve entirely. "Tell me plainly. Do you want me?"

I felt more than heard his low growl of "yes." He tilted his face down to mine, and the whole Fade narrowed to the wet warm place where our lips met. I had dreamed his imagined self as passionate, but the real Solas surpassed anything my sleeping mind could construct. I clutched desperately at his shoulders, trying to steady my shaky knees, as his tongue slid into my mouth. When I felt his hands in the small of my back, I dared to lift my trembling fingers to caress one of his ears. I stroked slowly along the outside edge until I reached the long and pointed tip and played with its exquisitely sensitive contours.

He broke away, moaning as he turned his head. I knew what he was thinking as soon as he began to trail more kisses up my neck, but I still cried out when his mouth closed on my own ear, sucking, his teeth scraping the lobe slightly. His hands slid lower, pulling us even tighter together as he pressed himself hard and insistent against me. Dazed with lust, I gasped out the first inane thought that occurred to me: "Planning to cast some spells with that staff?"

"Don't tempt me," he whispered hoarsely.

By way of response, I rolled my hips slowly against his, enjoying the way it made him draw in a sharp breath. He looked me in the eyes then and seemed to come to a hard-won decision. He moved one of his hands from my waist and raised it to the side of my face. A faint purple glow gathered in his palm and crept gradually out to envelop us both. Ripples of sharply tingling sensation began to spread through every inch of my body. And yet I could tell he was holding the full force of the energy back even as he thrust himself against me. "Do it," I said. "Don't stop."

The glow around us intensified, and the pleasure along with it. I could feel my focus going to pieces as I approached the brink. The dream disassembled and I crashed back into my own body. "Solas!" I awoke crying his name, entangled in the sheets of my own bed, arching and writhing in the grip of a very real climax. The pale yellow light of morning was tumbling in through the windows of my room. I rolled over and grinned into my pillow, remembering how the same energy that he had wrapped around me had also enfolded him. I suspected - and hoped - that he'd woken up in the same state as me.

Judging by the way that Solas averted his eyes from me when I entered his quarters later that morning, my suspicions had been correct. "I am profoundly sorry for intruding on you last night," he said quietly. "I lost control. I shouldn't have."

"That's funny. I came here to tell you I'd like it if you'd lose control some more."

He looked at me with relief in his face - but along with it I saw something darker, deep and vast and impossible to identify. "You have no idea what you're asking."

"Maybe not," I said, drawing nearer to him with each word that I spoke. "But you still have nothing to apologize for. In fact, I'd like to do that again. Maybe even when we're awake." I was close enough now to bring my lips within a hair's breadth of his ear, close enough to feel him shiver at the memories my breath evoked. "Until then, you're welcome in my dreams anytime. You'll already be there anyway."

Before he could respond, I walked away, unable to disguise the satisfied smile that spread across my face. Perhaps tonight it would be his turn to dream of me.

**Author's Note:**

> Story and series title are from ["In Sleep" by Lissie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL4jdHifA0A), which is a Lavellan/Solas song if there ever was one.


End file.
